In last week’s American, St. Louis Comptroller Darlene Green wrote in an op-ed: “I strongly urge you to vote against repealing the earnings tax and vote NO ON PROPOSITION A ON November 2.” She took this strong stance on a ballot initiative funded by billionaire financier Rex Sinquefield. If Proposition A passes on the statewide ballot on Nov. 2, then voters in St. Louis would be triggered to vote next April on whether to retain or sunset the City’s one percent earnings tax. “This fiscal year, it is expected to bring in $137.5 million and is the City’s largest revenue source by far,” Green wrote. “Almost one-third of the City’s general fund budget relies on revenue from the earnings tax.” When you state plainly that a ballot initiative funded by a billionaire idealogue is in danger of depriving this cash-starved City of nearly one-third of its revenue, it is easy to see why Green is treating the situation like an emergency.
As a member of the three-person Board of Estimate and Apportionment, the City’s chief fiscal body, Green bears one-third of the responsibility for the City’s financial decisions. (She also has to maintain the City’s healthy credit rating, which would be gravely threatened by eliminating the earnings tax.) When we approached Green to comment on the issue, we also approached the other two members of E&A, Mayor Francis G. Slay and Lewis Reed, president of the Board of Aldermen. More than a week later, they remain silent. We believe their lack of leadership is to be explained, in part, because they have both benefited from Sinquefield’s lavish campaign spending, whereas Green – despite her fiscal conservatism – has not.
The day after we printed Green’s strong statement about proposition A, The Beacon flushed Slay out on the issue. He spoke about Sinquefield by first name and made reference to both his and his single largest campaign donor’s “hearts.” Slay said, “I believe in my heart that Rex does not want to see this city in a position where we can’t pay our bills. So I’m hoping that he will find it in his heart not to be pumping money into the campaign in April.” The April campaign refers to a citywide vote that will be triggered if Prop A passes statewide in November. Slay said he assumed Prop A will pass statewide. This assumption ignores the provision in Prop A that would ban municipalities statewide from ever enacting an earnings tax. Slay, who expects out-state Missouri to care about his local control of his police department, acts as if he doesn’t believe these out-state areas might defend their local control of their tax structures.
In essence, the mayor has ceded to Sinquefield a pet proposition of his financial angel without a fight, while relying on faith in the contents of the financier’s “heart” that he won’t continue his fight next April. In a pathetic move, Slay even goes so far as threaten to spend Sinquefield’s own money against him in April, saying: “I’m going to be using my campaign fund to fight this, so the same money he has given me will be used to fight this in April.”
That is more than Lewis Reed has said. He continues to ignore us. On his Twitter account, he has enthused this past week about “the world’s largest seesaw.” On the St. Louis Core website he runs, purportedly “a forum for discussion and participation in important issues affecting St. Louis,” Reed’s staffer has posted on “solar panels and urban parking lots,” but not on a voter’s issue that could deprive his own City of one-third of its revenue. With such weak leadership, perhaps St. Louis is doomed to experience whatever desperate outcomes it gets from Sinquefield’s initiatives.
